This archive report was first published on 18 June 2020.
As the world grapples with the ongoing pandemic, China is facing a new challenge with a second wave of COVID-19 hitting the country. The fresh cluster of cases was detected in Beijing, with 21 new cases reported in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 158 since a cluster was detected last week.
Beijing authorities have urged people not to leave the city, closed schools again, and locked down around 30 residential compounds to stamp out the virus. Officials are also collecting around 400,000 samples a day for testing.
"I don't really mind waiting, it's for the greater good and the benefit of society," a 25-year-old shop assistant surnamed Pang told AFP.
Despite the efforts to contain the outbreak, China's airports cancelled two-thirds of all flights on Wednesday, and flight-tracking websites showed around 140 passenger flights had landed or departed so far on Thursday.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiology expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the new outbreak had peaked around June 13 and had now been "brought under control". However, he warned that the curve would continue for a period of time, and the number of cases would become less and less.
Meanwhile, the world economy continues to take a hit, with the US Labor Department saying another 1.5 million American workers filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the number of people laid off, at least temporarily, by COVID-19 to 45.7 million.
In the United States, the number of daily deaths dropped below 1,000 for a seventh day in a row, but the number of new infections has plateaued at around 20,000 per day. More than a dozen states are recording their highest number of new COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
Early optimism that South Asia might have dodged the ravages of the pandemic has disappeared as soaring infection rates turn the densely populated region into a global hotspot. Overflowing hospitals from Kabul to Dhaka are turning away suspected virus patients, mortuaries are being overwhelmed as cemeteries and crematoria struggle to cope, and desperate families are searching for help for critically ill loved ones.
